Of Expectations: Breakfast at the Malfoys
by drano
Summary: Breakfast at the Malfoys. Doesn't take Deathly Hallows into account


He sat alone at the long, ornate table. The brighter beginnings of morning were creeping in through the high windows, slowly illuminating the rest of the fairly large, ornate dining room. It was still somewhat dark where he sat at one end, hunched forward with his elbows resting on the table, his hands working absently in the air just above it. While he wore rather immaculately cut robes, completely contradicting that fact was the very least the rest of his appearance could do. His long, white blond hair was an amusing mass of disarray, almost like static electricity had taken advantage of him in his present condition. It appeared as if some semblance of order had been tried for at some point, though most of his wild, frayed hair had escaped the attempt.

His face wore a blank, lost expression. His mouth was slightly agape and his eyes listlessly stared at an undefined point above the table.

He made no movements at all, aside from his hands moving slightly, as though fumbling with something that wasn't there.

A darting brown mass did nothing to change this, nor did the sounds that accompanied such phenomenon.

Distant voices began to be heard in other rooms, growing in volume and frequency as the minutes dragged by, still with no apparent change in Lucius Malfoy.

The two main doors to the dining room, large and ornate as well, suddenly burst open and the voices became louder as a regal blonde woman backed through them, deftly balancing a large tray and loudly discussing something with someone who was apparently at the other end of the adjoining room.

Smaller figures followed Narcissa Malfoy, far more concerned with what she was carrying than what she was talking about.

"Yes, I understand, mother," Draco Malfoy trailed into the room after the three children and his mother, "But there's simply no way he'll budge about it. He helps win a single bloody war and then thinks his schedule is imperturbable—Breakfast!" He shouted back the way he'd come. "Come quickly, while there's still some!"

"Honestly, Draco," Narcissa was maneuvering around the table, setting places while miraculously avoiding the three roughly waist high blurs of color, two brown and one blonde, which were chasing each other around the table, "You have to put your foot down in these matters, it's your money after all—I'm starting to worry that you're beginning to lose your edge—"

"My edge?" Draco snorted, one arm whipping out to intercept and scoop up one of the racing masses of brown, which turned out to be a squirming little girl with a bushy mess of soft chocolate hair, giggling fiercely down at the excitement circling around the table and the still motionless Lucius Malfoy,

"Wouldn't be from a lack of practice." Draco muttered as he sat the girl down in a chair before raising his voice again. "Breakfast is ready!"

Narcissa's bustle hesitated slightly as she reached her lethargic husband. "Here darling, eat up quickly." Beside him she set down a box of Lucky Charms—oddly his favorite cereal—before quickly laying out a bowl and filling it.

Lucius Malfoy's motions didn't change at all, though his hands now had something to rhythmlessly move in. Strangely enough, even despite the apparent limits to his attentiveness, he always had a penchant for separating out the golden pot marshmallows from the rest of his Lucky Charms.

Now the chaos subsided somewhat as the children, guided sternly, if somewhat distractedly by their father, took seats around the table and began breakfast. The peace didn't last long, however, as the two girls followed their littler brother's example by standing on their chairs and leaning over their plates to eat. Before Draco had turned around, the younger boy had already taken a handful of soggy cereal and flung it across the table at his sister sitting opposite.

"Cissy! No! Do not throw your food!" Draco half leapt over the table as hostilities broke out in all quarters, restraining one of the guilty arms cocked back to deliver another round as he vainly grabbed a fistful of napkins and valiantly tried to wipe at where the table was covered with milk and cereal. "Young lady!" he intoned, succeeding in halting that culprit in a fit of guilty giggles while trying to verbally restrain the other two. "Mother, _please_." He begged.

But Narcissa barely spared him a glance as she hurried out of the room with an empty tray. "Restrain your children, Draco, I'm busy."

"But the table?" he asked in exasperated tones as he abandoned the moping efforts entirely to quell the remaining urges to fire soggy projectiles.

"I'm busy," Narcissa repeated distractedly.

"Grand-ma's busy," Cissy informed him with a giggle. "She maked breakfast."

"She _made _breakfast, honey, _made_. But honestly, what has become of that woman's priorities?" Draco asked, for the first time sparing a glance at his father, who was still slowly progressing towards sorting his Lucky Charms. It had to be a brief glance, however, as reinforcements arrived.

Two more children, twins, a little louder and a little older, burst through the doors no sooner than they'd shut behind Narcissa. Draco was attempting to herd them towards open seats when hostilities reopened from down the table.

"Dear!" he called desperately as things progressed from nearly manageable and mostly harmless games to barely restrained chaos as Edward, the youngest at the table with soft brown hair, sat down in his chair and slowly broke out into wailing peals as a handful of the food fight he'd started hit him in the face. "Elizabeth, put the food down, now! Look what you've done, you've made your brother cry!"

He instantly regretted the words, or at least the tone, as Elizabeth, the more sensitive of the two middle girls, sat down in her own chair and began sobbing guiltily under his quickly withdrawn scolding.

"But I didn't mean it!" she tearfully insisted between whimpers.

"Yes, sweetie, I know, I know," he risked a glance up the table to where the newly arrived twins were sitting and observing all this. The most practical pair in the family, the two were quickly slurping up their cereal. Though Ethan was staring mischievously at the commotion with an all too familiar smirk, obviously enjoying every bit of it, his sister Congy, the child that most closely resembled Draco, was taking turns glaring at the scene and her twin brother with a distinctly disapproving expression.

But their hope for law and order was easing her way through the two doors, mindful of her protruding stomach as well as the infant walking precariously alongside her, holding onto one of her fingers that she had to stoop to offer.

"Honey," Draco was pleading again, "Edward's crying, can you take care of him?"

Hermione Malfoy bent over carefully and scooped up the infant beside her. "Here, take Ginny," she handed the infant to Draco as he came racing around the corner to gently take their youngest daughter out of her hands. As she straightened her back carefully, resting a hand on her expectant stomach, she ran a practiced eye over the scene and started for Edward. "What happened here? Why is Edward crying?" She asked no one in particular.

Draco answered from the other end of the table, slightly distracted as he put Ginny into her high chair. "He started throwing food at his sisters, and Elizabeth threw some back at him."

"It was an accident, mummy," Elizabeth insisted, wiping miserably at her runny nose.

"But you know this kind of thing happens when you throw food," Hermione scolded as she soothed Edward down to a petulant moan, his eyes red and puffy. "—And when you don't listen to your father," she added almost as an afterthought, unable to keep from smiling as she saw her distinctly harried looking husband trying to spoon feed an uncooperative Ginny in her high chair.

He shot her a frustrated look when Ginny's hand caught the spoon and a plop of whatever was today's breakfast for their youngest landed on the middle of the table. Evidently deeming the noise and general distress level at her end of the table sufficiently suppressed, Hermione worked her way down to Draco.

"Your children eat like plebeians, Granger," he muttered under his breath as she took over and he wiped at his shirt, where another errant plop had found its mark.

"Oh, they're _my _children now?" she inquired sarcastically, keeping the spoon steady and dipping it into Ginny's mouth with practiced ease.

Draco gave his best haughty sniff. "Malfoys have actually mastered cutlery—usually from a very early age."

"I bet," she glanced down the table to make sure no other crisis was brewing as Narcissa entered again with the rest of breakfast.

Draco must not have noticed his mother's entrance, however, as he promptly stepped back into her, nearly feeding the second course to the floor.

"Mother—" Draco broke off, his hands shooting out to steady the tray. His mouth compressed for a moment and he held back what he probably would've liked to say. "This would be ever so much smoother, Granger, if we could use magic."

"You know that upsets Edward—" she began.

"Yes, Granger, I _do _happen to know—" he let out a sigh as he saw Congy, the blonde haired one of the twins, climb up on top of her chair. "Congy—"

Congy indignantly crossed her arms over her chest and glared evenly with her father.

"I want to know why you always call mum Granger." Congy gave him what was probably supposed to be a challenging look. "It's not her name, I know."

"Well—" Draco stuttered, looking to his wife but finding her preoccupied, probably purposely, "That's true—"

"And it's not a word," Congy said in a matter of fact voice, "I know, I looked it up."

"Actually," Draco seemed to rally himself under the uncannily similar scrutiny of his daughter, "It used to be her name, like grandma and grandpa Granger. But it's a special name for mummy that I—"

But at that moment, Congy's twin Ethan made a face and suddenly reached up to yank on one of her tightly braided pigtails. She let out a squeal and Ethan snickered, throwing back his chair and starting to race off.

"Ethan Malfoy!" Draco didn't bother to grab for the boy as his bellow stopped him in his tracks. The look that Draco received from beneath the boy's dark brown bangs was a familiar one: the hopeful conspiring look that they often shared over something amusing. But in this case, Draco was not amused in the slightest. "What do you think you're doing? Never pull your sister's—or anyone else's hair, do you understand? Now apologize to your sister right now."

The room had gone deathly quietly, though Lucius Malfoy continued to listlessly separate his Lucky Charms. At this point, he'd almost sorted them all. Now he occasionally took some in his fingers and brought them to his mouth, though he frequently missed the mark. As a result, his lips and chin were sprouting soggy patches of gold pots.

"Yes, sir—I'm sorry, Congy," Ethan said quietly, not even bothering to sneak a furtive peek at his mother since his father was usually the one to look to.

"I think you've had enough breakfast," Draco continued, "Now go and help your grandmother with the rest before we leave."

Not long after Ethan had plodded dolefully out of the door and the noise had begun to return to normal, the door opened with a slightly different air as an older, bleary-eyed boy with black hair sulked in.

"Nice to know everyone waited for me," the boy muttered as he sat down.

"I called you, Abacus," Hermione said as she rounded that end of the table.

"Hey, what are we having for breakfast anyway?" Draco asked wryly as he plopped down next to Edward. "Honey, please … sit down for a moment,"

"Yeah, mummy, sit down." Cissy called from the other end of the table.

But at that moment Narcissa came through the door, this time empty handed.

"Sit down? There isn't any time!" she called, "Hurry up, or you'll all be late!"

Roughly only half of the table made an enthusiastic rush for the door.

"But I didn't even get anything to eat!" Abacus protested loudly.

"That's because you never get up!" Congy pointedly shouted back on her way out the door.

"Shut up!" came the dignified answer.

Draco was just now catching up with the inevitable progress of the day.

"Kiss your grandmother goodbye—and thank her for breakfast too!" he shouted belatedly towards the already swinging doors.

Two blurs of brown flashed by, shortly followed by two hurried choruses of goodbye to Narcissa in the next room.

Elizabeth shot up from her own seat, but seemed to be at odds over whether she wanted to rush after her siblings or whether she wanted to finish her cereal more. When she had at last slurped down the last spoonful of cereal, she turned, hurried in the opposite direction of the door, stood up on her tiptoes, and planted a kiss on Lucius' cheek, dodging around the sticky clumps of Lucky Charms.

"Bye, grandpa," she said happily, beaming.

Lucius' face seemed to have fallen into something akin to shock, if that was possible, and his lips began to work feebly.

"Mu—Mu—"

But Elizabeth was already racing off for the door.

As though he had been waiting until all the other children had left, Abacus got to his feet.

"This is so unfair, why can't we ever actually eat at meals?" he demanded before stomping off.

Hermione had at some point sat down, but at this she wearily climbed back to her feet and began to order things for clean up.

"He is turning out to be such a drama queen," she rolled her eyes at Draco, only half seriously.

"You were the one that wanted to name him Harry. Your intuition is frightening sometimes." Draco pointed out as he got to his feet as well and started clearing the opposite side of the table. He and Hermione quickly worked their way towards the center.

It was a long running joke between them, private of course, that Abacus was actually Hermione and Harry Potter's secret love child. His most prominent features certainly didn't seem to have come from Draco's side of the family.

"And you wanted to name him Scorpius." Hermione genuinely rolled her eyes at that. "Actually, I was thinking that he gets it from you, dear," she looked up at him with a warm smile.

"Oh, no," he shook his head, also only half seriously, "I seem to recall you as being the drama queen."

"I was not!" Hermione protested in surprise.

"In your own way," Draco said with a smile that forestalled any further objections.

Hermione stopped cleaning for a moment and sighed. "Why do we always end up doing this? We could use magic for this part, you know. And we _are_ going to be late."

But they both knew that they did it because it provided them the precious few seconds that they could get alone at this time of the day.

"_My _children?" she repeated what Draco had said from before, shaking her head. "I was always under the impression that it took two."

"Where ever did you get that from?" Draco laughed, not looking up. "Another one of those Muggle superstitions?"

She regarded him with a knowing expression. "No, I came to that conclusion after all of our in-depth research."

"I don't think research is exactly the best word, dear. Research is never nearly that fun."

"But—" she sighed, "Seriously. I don't think this is working, Draco. This is all just too much right now."

"You won't let me hire any assistants for you," Draco's progress had reached the seat across from Hermione. Leaning over, he gently took her hand. "But I know that would drive you crazy—and then unfortunately you would drive _me_ crazy. And I just couldn't handle that right now." He gave her a reassuring smile.

The past several months they'd been dedicating a good deal of their time and sanity towards seeing Hermione's first book through completion and into publication—proper publication by Draco's standards. He would of course profess to anyone who would listen, Hermione included, that she writing about their years at Hogwarts, to a target audience of Muggle children no less, was absolutely barmy. But he evidently believed that so strongly that he'd tirelessly supported and assisted her work through it, especially now that it was in the publishing stages, where he could help the most.

"Listen, Hermione, in a few more weeks the worst will be over and—" he trailed off as he leaned over closer, looking down and tracing soft circles over her hand.

"And the baby could be here in a few weeks," Hermione pointed out with a weary smile.

His other hand strayed up to rest on her belly. He looked up and smirked. "Almost makes you want to have another eight, doesn't it?'

"Almost," she matched his smirk warmly and then leaned in close as he softly met her lips across the table.

They had to pull apart quickly, however, as the table was abruptly rained with a shocked sputter of gold pot Lucky Charms.

**AN: **Sorry if there's any confusion with all the names, or anything else. And sorry about the names as well, they're the best I could come up with.

Thanks for reading.


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